[Cp  9  70.76 


G86r 


Dedication  of  Maine  Monument, 
Salisbury,  N.  C. ,  1908 


G-rimes 


€&e  Hi&rarp 

attyt 

Ontoersitp  of  J!3ort&  Carolina 


Collection  of  j]2ort&  Carolmiana 
%W  tioolt  toag  ptwnttd 

Q>  97o.TG 
'     G^  Coy- 


-•* 


REMARKS 


J.  BRYAN  GRIMES,   i^-wa-a. 


RESPONDING    FOR    THE 


STATE    OF    NORTH    CAROLINA, 


UPON   THE  OCCASION   OF  THE   DEDICATION    OF  THE   MAINE 

MONUMENT   AT  SALISBURY.  N.  C. 

MAY   8.  1908. 


NOTE 


At  the  urgent  request  of  Governor  Glenn  and  the  Hon. 
B.  R.  Lacy,  I  reluctantly  consented,  Thursday  afternoon,  to 
go  to  Salisbury  and  respond  in  behalf  of  the  State  of  North 
Carolina  upon  the  occasion  of  the  dedication  of  the  Maine 
Monument  there,  on  Friday,  the  8th  of  May,  1908.  Time  did 
not  permit  me  to  prepare  a  speech  satisfactory  to  myself  and 
I  made  no  notes  for  the  occasion.  Since  my  speech  there  has 
been  misrepresented,  several  gentlemen  have  asked  me  to 
write  it  out.  My  memory  is  distinct  and  vivid  as  to  what  I 
said,  and  I  herewith  reproduce  it.  t    Bryan  Grimes 

Raleigh,  N.  C,  May  9,  1908. 


REMARKS 


Ladies  and  Gentlemen  of  Maine,  Fellow  North  Carolinians: 

In  the  absence  of  the  Governor  of  Xorth  Carolina,  who 
deeply  regrets  his  inability  to  be  present,  I  have  the  honor 
to  welcome  you,  citizens  of  the  State  of  Maine,  to  the  State 
of  Xorth  Carolina.  This  is  indeed  a  festival  of  tears.  It 
has  been  said  that  a  people  who  forget  their  dead  deserve 
themselves  to  be  forgotten.  It  is  meet  and  proper,  and  to  the 
glory  of  your  old  State,  that  you  have  assembled  here  to  do 
honor  to  and  fitly  commemorate  the  valor  and  heroism  of  those 
men  who  died  for  the  cause  which  they  believed  to  be  right. 
On  both  sides,  as  our  distinguished  friend  has  just  said,  we 
fought  for  the  cause  which  we  believed  to  be  right,  as  God 
gave  it  to  us  to  see  the  right.  There  are  many  things  in 
common  between  the  people  of  the  North  and  the  people  of  the 
South,  and  the  glory  of  the  soldier  wh<  i  wore  the  blue  and  the 
valor  of  the  soldier  who  wore  the  gray  are  a  common  heritage 
to  all  Americans. 

In  the  early  days  of  our  republic  there  was  much  in  com- 
mon between  your  mother  State,  Massachusetts,  from  which 
the  State  of  Maine  was  formed,  and  the  people  of  the  Caro- 
linas.  In  the  old  days  of  the  Stamp  Act,  we  made  the  first 
resistance  to  British  oppression,  for  Col.  John  Ashe  and  Col. 
Hugh  TVaddell,  at  the  head  of  the  Carolina  planters,  captured 
the  British  stamp  master  on  the  Cape  Fear,  burned  his  stamps 
in  the  public  square,  and  made  him  take  an  oath  that  he  would 
never  again  attempt  to  bring  more  stamps  into  the  colony. 

A  few  years  afterwards,  citizens  of  Massachusetts,  dis- 
guised as  Indians,  at  night,  as  an  act  of  resentment  against 
British  oppression,  threw  the  tea  from  the  British  ships  into 
the  Boston  harbor.  For  this  the  port  of  Boston  was  closed 
and  no  ships  were  allowed  to  enter  or  depart  from  the  harbor 
except  those  bearing  food.  Many  of  your  best  citizens  were 
impoverished  or  ruined,  and  your  sister  colony,  Xorth  Caro- 
lina, deeply  sympathizing  with  you  under  this  act  of  unjust 
oppression,  fitted  out  sloops  loaded  with  provisions  from  Wil- 
mington and  Edenton  and  sent  them  without  charge  to  the 
citizens  of  Boston.  There  are  other  things  about  which  it 
seems  that  the  people  of  Massachusetts  and  the  people  of  the 


Carolinas  bad  similar  ideas.  It  might  be  said  that  we 
learned  some  of  tbe  lessons  of  secession  from  von. 

In  1807,  thinking  to  bring  to  terms  England  and  France, 
who  were  imposing  upon  lis,  the  Embargo  Act  was  passed, 
which  worked  injury  to  your  commercial  interests,  and  John 
Quincy  Adams  notified  the  President  of  the  United  States 
that,  unless  that  act  was  repealed,  the  State  of  Massachusetts 
and  Xew  England  would  nullify  it  and  secede.  A  few  years 
afterwards,  in  1812,  when  the  Xew  England  States  felt  that 
the  war  with  Great  Britain  was  destructive  to  their  business, 
we  find  the  Governors  of  Massachusetts,  Connecticut  and 
Rhode  Island  refusing  to  furnish  troops  to  the  United  States 
Government  to  wage  war  against  Great  Britain.  The  Su- 
preme Court  of  Massachusetts  sustained  its  Governor.  The 
Legislature  of  Connecticut  sustained  its  Governor  and  the 
Council  of  Rhode  Island  sustained  its  Governor.  This  was 
in  effect  nullification.  In  1814,  the  famous  Hartford  Con- 
vention was  held,  in  which  the  States  of  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  openly  threatened  secession  and  af- 
firmed the  principles  of  the  Virginia  and  Kentucky  reso- 
lutions. 

Again  in  1814  the  State  of  Massachusetts  threatened  seces- 
sion upon  the  issue  of  the  annexation  of  Texas. 

Even  after  Maine  was  separated  from  the  mother  State  of 
Massachusetts,  it  asserted  its  State  sovereignty,  in  1831,  when 
the  King  of  the  Netherlands,  acting  as  arbitrator  in  the 
boundary  dispute  with  Canada,  awarded  part  of  the  territory 
of  Maine  to  that  country.  Maine  nullified  this  award,  and 
her  mother  State  of  Massachusetts,  which  still  claimed  a 
reserved  interest  in  part  of  the  Maine  territory,  sustained  her 
daughter  for  ten  years,  or  until  the  Webster-Ashburton 
Treaty,  in  1842,  settled  the  controversy. 

So  it  seems,  my  friends,  that  the  doctrine  of  State  rights 
and  secession  was  not  a  new  one,  and  its  promulgation  was  not 
confined  entirely  to  the  South. 

In  the  great  war  between  the  States  that  followed  the 
South's  secession,  many  thousands  of  Eederal  prisoners  fell 
into  our  hands,  and  to  commemorate  the  death  of  these  men 
from  Maine  who  died  for  their  country's  sake  and  for  the 
preservation  of  the  Union  you  have  gathered  to  celebrate  the 
unveiling  of  this  magnificent  monument.  We  are  once  more 
united.  We  can  now  talk  of  the  facts  that  were  as  past  his- 
tory.     We  can  talk  about    it  without  bitterness,   as  seekers 


after  truth,  for  the  day  has  passed  when  we  dip  our  pen  in 
gall  in  writing  the  story  of  our  great  Civil  War. 

In  that  greatest  and  bloodiest  of  fratricidal  strifes  that 
is  known  to  history,  there  were  270,000  Federal  soldiers  con- 
fined in  Confederate  prisons.  Of  this  number,  in  round 
figures,  22,000  of  them  died  away  from  their  homes,  away 
from  the  clash  of  arms  and  in  loneliness  and  misery  and 
hunger  and  sickness  and  suffering.  They  were  no  less 
martyrs  to  the  cause  than  if  they  had  fallen  upon  the  field 
of  battle.  Eight  per  cent,  of  the  prisoners  that  fell  into  our 
hands  died.  In  your  prisons  there  were  220,000  Confed- 
erates confined;  of  this  number,  26,000  died.  Our  loss  was 
twelve  per  cent,  of  the  men  that  fell  into  your  hands,  and 
your  loss  was  eight  per  cent,  of  the  men  that  fell  into  our 
hands.  We  did  not  sustain  your  prisoners  with  the  comforts 
or  with  the  rations  to  which  they  were  accustomed.  We  did 
not  have  them  for  our  own  men.  We  could  scarcely  feed 
our  armies  in  the  field,  and  many  a  Confederate  general  as  he 
rode  down  the  lines  was  not  unfamiliar  with  the  cry  of 
"bread,  bread,  bread,"  when  there  was  no  bread.  We  could 
not  feed  our  soldiers,  and  we  could  not  feed  our  prisoners 
as  they  should  be  fed.  Your  prisoners  in  our  hands  lacked 
the  medical  attention  which  they  should  have  had.  The 
Federal  Government  declared  medicines  to  be  contraband  of 
war  and  we  could  not  obtain  them.  The  Surgeon-General 
of  the  Confederacy  called  the  attention  of  the  governmental 
authorities  to  the  pitiable  need  of  medical  supplies  and  the 
Confederate  Government,  through  Mr.  Ould,  offered  to  buy 
from  the  United  States  medical  supplies  at  two  and  three 
times  the  regular  prices,  to  be  paid  for  in  gold,  tobacco  or 
cotton.  This  medicine  was  to  be  devoted  strictly  and  ex- 
clusively to  the  use  of  Federal  prisoners,  and  Mr.  Ould 
further  offered,  if  the  Federal  Government  insisted  upon  it, 
that  their  surgeons  could  come  within  our  lines  and  administer 
to  their  sick  and  wounded  and  see  that  this  medicine  was 
restricted  exclusively  to  the  use  of  Union  prisoners.  This 
was  denied  to  us.  We  were  helpless  and  unable  to  get  it. 
So  you  will  see  that  the  Confederate  Government  was  not 
entirely  responsible  for  the  great  sufferings  and  death  in  these 
prisons.  Our  Confederate  authorities  made  overture  after 
overture  to  the  Federal  Government  to  exchange  prisoners, 
but  they  were  steadily  refused.  Finally  General  Lee  took 
this  matter  up  with  your  great  commander-in-chief.  General 


6 

Grant,  as  he  believed  the  sufferings  of  the  soldiers  would  ap- 
peal to  the  martial  spirit  of  that  old  hero;  but  General  Grant 
denied  it ;  and,  that  we  may  keep  within  the  record,  I  will 
read  von  an  abstract  from  General  Grant's  letter : 

"City  Point,  August  18,  1864. 
"To  General  Butler. 

"On  the  subject  of  exchange,  however,  I  differ  from  Gen- 
eral Hitchcock.  It  is  hard  on  our  men  held  in  Southern 
prisons  not  to  exchange  them,  bnt  it  is  humanity  to  those 
left,  in  our  ranks  to  right  out  battles.  Every  man  released 
on  parole,  or  otherwise,  becomes  an  active  soldier  against  ns 
at  once,  either  directly  or  indirectly.  If  we  commence  a 
sy stem  of  exchange  which  liberates  all  prisoners  taken,  we 
will  have  to  tight  on  until  the  whole  South  is  exterminated. 
If  we  hold  those  caught,  they  amount  to  no  more  than  dead 
men-      *     *     *     *    L*     *    '*     *     *         «n    g_  Graxt/, 

Bnt,  my  friends,  we  are  to-day,  thank  God,  a  reunited 
country,  and  Maine  and  Carolina  join  hands  and  vie  with  each 
other  in  their  efforts  to  make  this  the  greatest  government  on 
earth.  This  is  our  flag  as  much  as  your  Hag.  It  has  been 
laved  in  the  blood  of  Southern  heroes  and  Carolina  heroes, 
and  we  of  the  South  have  done  as  much  to  make  it  great  and 
glorious  as  you  men  of  the  Xorth  have.  When  we  were 
fighting  Great  Britain  for  the  establishment  of  this  govern- 
ment, we  find  that  North  Carolina  was  the  first  State  to  make 
a  declaration  of  independence,  and  every  Bchoolboy  is  familiar 
with  the  Mecklenburg  Declaration  of  Independence,  thirteen 
months  before  the  Declaration  at  Philadelphia.  At  Halifax, 
on  April  12,  1776,  Xorth  Carolina  was  the  first  State  as 
an  organized  government  to  declare  for  independence  from 
Great  Britain,  and  right  nobly  on  many  a  battle-field  did  we 
maintain  the  stand  we  had  taken.  At  AEoores  Creek,  Kings 
Mountain  and  Guilford  Courthouse,  which  last  made  neces- 
sary the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown,  Carolina's 
blood  flowed  freely.  When  Washington  crossed  the  Dela- 
ware, coming  south,  discouraged  and  dejected,  he  was  met  by 
General  Xash,  with  his  six  regiments  of  North  Carolinians, 
and  with  them  Washington  turned  about  and  gave  battle  to  the 
British  at  Germantown  and  Brandywine.  In  the  Revolution 
North  Carolina  was  the  great  recruiting  ground  of  the  South, 
and,   although  we  had  only  9,000  troops  on   the   pay  rolls, 


nearly  27,000  men  in  North  Carolina  shouldered  their 
muskets  for  the  cause  of  independence. 

The  South,  as  I  have  said,  contributed  largely  to  the  estab- 
lishment, as  well  as  the  development  and  perpetuation,  of  this 
Union.  Peyton  Randolph,  the  first  president  of  the  Continen- 
tal Congress,  was  a  Southern  man.  Richard  Henry  Lee,  the 
author  and  the  mover  of  the  resolution  for  independence, 
was  a  Southern  man.  The  organizer  of  the  navy  of  the  infant 
United  States  was  a  Southern  man,  Joseph  Hewes,  of  North 
Carolina.  The  first  commander-in-chief  of  the  United  States 
Navy,  James  Nicholson,  of  Maryland,  was  a  Southern  man. 
The  commander-in-chief  of  the  armies  of  the  United  States 
and  the  first  President  of  the  Republic  was  a  Southern  man. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  the  author  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, the  greatest  statesman  of  America,  and  the  man 
who  did  more  to  guide  the  steps  of  the  infant  republic  than 
any  other  man,  was  a  Southern  man.  James  Madison,  the 
author  of  the  Constitution,  was  a  Southern  man.  Upon  the 
high  seas,  he  who  did  more  to  make  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
known,  feared  and  respected  all  over  the  world,  and  the 
greatest  naval  hero  of  the  century,  was  John  Paul  Jones,  a 
North  Carolinian  and  a  Southern  man.  In  all  the  great 
developments  of  our  country,  those  men  who  have  added  most 
to  its  expansion  were  Southern  men.  Thomas  Jefferson  added 
the  -great  Louisiana  purchase ;  James  Monroe  added  the 
Florida  territory ;  James  K.  Polk,  the  North  Carolinian,  ac- 
quired Texas  and  all  that  great  western  part  of  our  country, 
more  than  an  empire  in  extent,  that  belonged  to  Mexico. 
Southern  States  have  been  generous  in  their  donations  to  the 
Union.  Virginia  gave  the  great  Xorthwest  territory,  and  our 
old  State  of  North  Carolina  gave  the  Tennessee  territory  to 
this  government.  In  the  war  of  1812,  which  was  necessary 
to  establish  firmly  our  independence  from  Great  Britain, 
Johnston  Blakeley,  of  North  Carolina,  carried  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  to  victory  in  foreign  seas.  And  that  sturdy  old 
North  Carolinian,  Andrew  Jackson,  commanding  North 
Carolinians  and  Tennesseans,  hammered  the  life  out  of  the 
British  at  New  Orleans. 

I  say  this  flag  is  as  much  our  fla°;  as  it  is  yours.  We 
have  made  as  many  sacrifices  to  maintain  it  as  you  have. 
You  love  it  and  we  love  it,  for  it  is  the  flag  of  our  common 
country,  the  greatest  country  on  which  the  sun  shines. 


Time  will  not  permit  me  to  tell  of  the  glories  of  our  State : 
but  in  the  great  Civil  War,  although  we  loved  the  Union  and 
were  loath  to  leave  it,  when  our  constitutional  rights  as  we 
saw  them  were  overridden,  we  sprang  to  arms,  and  we  found 
that  the  State  of  North  Carolina  could  raise  an  army  in  less 
time  than  she  could  call  a  convention.  We  made  the  first 
sacrifice  at  Bethel  and  laid  down  our  arms  last  at  Appomattox. 
Out  of  a  military  population  of  115,000,  we  put  127,000 
troops  in  the  field,  and  lost  10,275,  or  thirty-five  per  cent,  of 
our  male  population — the  very  flower  of  our  manhood.  After 
four  years  of  bloody  strife,  we  surrendered  at  Appomattox, 
amid  the  bitter  tears  of  bronzed  veterans  unwilling  to  be  sur- 
rendered. The  war  was  over;  we  had  appealed  to  the  Bword, 
to  the  great  high  court  of  final  arbitration,  and  when  the 
decision  was  against  us  we  accepted  it  in  good  faith  and  as 
men.  We  surrendered  our  armies  and  surrendered  what  we 
thought  were  our  constitutional  rights,  even  if  we  did  not 
surrender  our  convictions. 

Jlore  than  forty  years  ago,  when  you  were  here  before,  you 
found  our  beautiful  homes  desolated;  woe  and  poverty  and 
sorrow  were  everywhere ;  but  to-day,  when  you  come  to  us, 
the  scene  is  changed.  Instead  of  scowls  of  hate,  you  are 
greeted  with  smiles  of  friendship.  We  are  still  'if  great  agri- 
cultural State,  as  we  were  then,  but  we  are  also  a  great 
manufacturing  State,  rivaling  Xew  Engrand  in  the  wealth  and 
greatness  of  our  manufacturing  interests.  We  are  glad  to 
have  you,  men  and  women  of  Elaine,  come  down  and  become 
better  acquainted  with  our  people.  Here  is  a  land  of  in- 
exhaustible natural  resources;  here  is  a  land  with  a  magni- 
ficent climate;  here  are  some  of  the  world's  greyest  water 
powers;  here  are  growth  and  prosperity  everywhere.  'We  are 
rich  in  all  these,  but  ricnest  in  our  men  and  women.  To 
this  land  of  plenty,  to  our  prosperous  homes,  to  our  beautiful 
Sunny  Southland,  our  own  fair  Carolina,  we  love  to  have 
you  come. 

Note. — An    intended    reference    to    North    Carolina^    part    in    the 
Spanish-American  war  was  omitted,  as  the  time  limit  had  expired. 


00032758105 

FOR  USE  ONLY  IN 
HE  NORTH  CAROLINA  COLLECTION 


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